LAST STAND.

Wairarapa Age, 19 May 1936, Page 5

LAST STAND.

EMPEROR HAILE SELASSIE TELLS HIS STORY.

ITALIAN METHODS OF WAR DENOUNCED.

WARRIORS UNABLE TO ENDURE RAIN OF VIRE.

LONDON, May 17. How, seeing that his faithful wairiors were being tortured by a “burning rain” of yperite, he staked all on the last battle was told by Haile Selassie and his secretary at Jerusalem to Mr. Douglas Duff, the “Sunday Pictorial’s” special correspondent.

Selassie said: “The warriors could endure bombing with shells, and even gas, but not the burning rain. Yperite falls like gentle rain, and then, if you are not quick enough in getting your clothes off, you are burnt. If it falls on your face yon are blinded. My men could not remove their clothes in the desert because the next yperite would have fallen on their bare skins. I was forced to the decision that I must fight a desperate battle rather than be tortured to death. Guerrilla warfare was impossible. We had no means of communication, and bands would have been herded slowly together and slaughtered.” Mr. Cheorches, Selassie’s secretary, taking up the story, said that before the final battle at Alembi the Emperor addressed the Imperial Guard, and said he intended to die in the last ditch rather than abandon his country to the invaders. “We fought for hours, blade to blade,” he said, “but were beaten by machine-gun fire. There were few of the Imperial Guard left. When the Emperor realised that he could do no more as a general he fought as a simple soldier, and' rushed sword in hand against the Italians. He pleaded with us to let him die on the field of battle, but w© seized him : and led him away. ’ ’ Resuming, Selassie said: “It is not my wish taht I am here. I collected all the soldiers available for policing the city, which was burned and sacked later by outlaws. My capture would have been taken as a sign that Abyssinia was no more. Here, though in exile, I am still a symbol that the empire is not entirely under Italy’s heel.”

UNDER ITALY’S RULE. '

JOURNALISTS EXPELLED FROM ADDIS ABABA. EXECUTIONS OF NATIVES. ADDIS ABABA, May 17. Mr. George Steer, “The Times's” special correspondent, who early this month married a girl correspondent of a Pans journal; Mr. Neben Zahl, of the Havas news agency, and two other journalists, all accused of anti-Italian propaganda and espionage, have been expelled from Addis Ababa and entrained for Jibuti among a score of Europeans who have been ordered fr ,ni the city.

Balahu, the giant former umbrella carrier to Haile Selassie, and la’er Drum-major to the Imperial Band, was condemned to death by an Italian military tribunal for espionage and brigandage and was shot. A number -.f other natives accused of murder, pillage, and traffic in firearms were executed.

Executed bandits include four who were charged with looting and murder in connection with the attack on a farm at Mulu of a German-Swiss agriculturist, whose wife rushed to the near Italian eamp and brought askaris to the rescue.

An American, Dr. A. Lambie, field director of the Sudan and Ethiopian Missions, . who nationalised himself as an Abyssinian in order to extend his contact with the natives, is to become an Italian subject, explaining that Haile 'Selassie failed his people by listening to Armenian adventurers.

SUMMARY TRIALS.

EXECUTIONS OF INNOCENT MEN. SERIOUS CHARGES AGAINST ITALIANS. (Received Monday, 8.25 pan.) LONDON, May 17. Tn a copyright message, “The Times” Jibuti correspondent says reports from Addis Ababa state that the Italians have made fifteen hundred arrests since their occupation of the city. A majority were alleged to have looted in the city. Trials by military tribunal have been summary and the evidence sketchy. Those condemned have been shot in batches of forty or fifty.

A new capital crime is the possession lof arms by Ethiopians, following a decree ordering arms to be surrendered within three days, of which a majority of the population is unaware. A search for arms began on May 9 and punishment for disobedience has been applied mercilessly. For instance, an Austrian banker returned home on the -afternoon of May 9 to find that his servants had disappeared. He applied to the Military Governor, whereupon he was told that they had been shot during the night. Some of them had been in his service for twenty years. Moreover they had defended his house during the looting.

The Italians also carried out deliberate revenge, including the murder by soldiers of the Ethiopian patriot lawyer Ato Aderra, who opposed the Italians in a lawsuit in the early days of the war.